


Dreamlands

by Kryptaria



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, James Bond (Craig movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 12:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5049046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only then did it occur to James that this probably wasn’t a conversation he should be having. He was supposed to fill out a Hostile Contact Report for every conversation he had with an enemy of the Commonwealth, and he suspected that there weren’t enough checkboxes on the form to cover this circumstance.</p><p>Remembering that he was a spy, his primary job intelligence gathering, he regained some of his old smooth manners. “I should have introduced myself. Bond. James Bond. And you are...?”</p><p>“Cthulhu.”</p><p>James nodded. There definitely weren’t enough checkboxes on the HCR for this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamlands

**Author's Note:**

> Posted a couple of years ago at http://kryptaria.tumblr.com/post/71802692087/dreamlands-an-unlikely-ficlet

He wasn’t human. Well,  _it_  wasn’t human, James corrected, eyeing the forlorn figure sitting on a rock overlooking a peaceful lake in the middle of fucking nowhere. That much, James did know — middle of fucking nowhere — because he’d been walking through that nowhere for the last two bloody days, since he’d parachuted out of a dying plane full of gold, heroin, and the smugglers who were attempting to cross international borders with both.

Two days of walking, and James had yet to find anything beyond mountains, rocks, and now, thankfully, a lake full of what he hoped like hell was potable water. Otherwise, he was going to die of thirst. And to die of dehydration after all the far more dramatic attempts at killing him felt somehow... anticlimactic. Like getting hit by a bus while crossing the street outside his flat.

Of course, he was also probably going a bit mad. Dehydration did that to a person.

Which was, perhaps, why he barely looked twice at the  _thing_  sitting on the rock and instead walked (staggered) to the edge of the lake. Without a moment’s thought to the state of his dinner suit (deplorable), James crouched (fell) and knelt at the edge of the lake. He scooped up a bit of water in his palm. Clear, free of grit, delightfully cool. He touched his tongue to it and tasted a wonderful lack of anything. Water that had an actual flavour, he’d learned, tended to be either questionable or tea, and neither was fit for human consumption.

He drank slowly, wary of triggering stomach cramps. Between sips, he splashed water on his face and the back of his neck, reviving himself a bit more. Thankfully it wasn’t summer, or he would’ve long since been dead from the heat. It was winter, he had water, and no one was shooting at him, at the moment — though if that  _did_  happen, as happened all too frequently in his life, at least he had his Walther with seven rounds remaining.

Eventually, though, the reality of his situation sank in. He was  _still_  in the middle of bloody nowhere, and if Q Branch hadn’t yet sent rescue, there was a good chance that the tracker in his arm was no longer responding or transmitting or doing whatever it was supposed to do.

And there was the matter of the thing on the rock.

Slowly, James turned, hoping that the  _thing_  had been a dehydration-induced hallucination. But no, it was still there, looking... well, impossible.

It was somewhat humanoid in shape, at least in that it had a couple of arms and legs and what might have been a head, all in the customary locations. It was hunched over, making it difficult for James to estimate how tall it would be when standing. Either it was entirely covered in the most unusual costume James had ever seen or its entirely bare skin was a mottled blackish green, with a depthless look, like a thick layer of translucent plastic. It had wings, but James could almost rationalise them away as a costume. He was rather stuck on the face.

Or what would have been a face, if not for the octopus. Well, the octopus  _tentacles_ , at any rate. The thing’s face was entirely made up of them, a mass of tentacles that hung limp, so long they draped over the thing’s clawed hands, like the beard of an alien, depressed Father Christmas.

James had the most irrational urge to ask if the thing was unwell.

Instead, he took an engraved steel cigarette case from his dinner jacket. There was a hole punched through one side, with a bullet still lodged in it. The bullet had killed two cigarettes and dented the other side of the case. If he hadn’t been carrying the case, he wondered if his ribs would have stopped the bullet as efficiently.

 _Smoking kills, except when it doesn’t_ , he thought with a silent, mad laugh.

He took out two cigarettes and his lighter. The case, with its bullet, went back into his pocket. He was considering framing it.

He lit one cigarette and walked over to the thing, though he walked much farther than he’d originally thought, as if the earth around the figure were stretching underfoot like rubber. Perhaps the thing could give him directions to wherever Hollywood was filming its latest blockbuster movie.

When he finally reached the rock, he politely offered, “Cigarette?”

The thing turned towards him, limp tentacles dragging over its hands. It had eyes — far too many of them, some bulging from its skin, others buried and blinking beneath the translucent surface. None of them were green or blue or brown or even violet, which James had seen on... what was her name? The assassin he’d met in Toronto two years ago...

The thing burbled at him, like a dying megaphone held deep underwater. The sound hit James like a truck, and he flinched involuntarily. In the space of a single blink, he saw infinite darkness, the black nothingness between galaxies, beyond the edge of the universe.

Then a word registered in his brain: “Thankss.”

The thing took the cigarette, pinched delicately between two claws. James would’ve held up his lighter, but he couldn’t see a mouth under all those tentacles, so he just offered the lighter, too. The thing took the lighter in its other hand and hunched over even more. Its wings extended slightly, and that same infinite, dark nothingness was stretched between the... struts? supports? What the hell were the parts of its wings called? It was more bat than bird, with not a single feather in sight.

With a shake of his head, James took the lighter back. Fragrant smoke, the finest Turkish tobacco, enveloped them both. Most of the thing’s eyes were gazing out towards the lake. James looked out as well, and now he could just barely see a pale green light, nacreous and vile, under the water. It hadn’t been there when he’d taken a drink.

Another time, he would’ve been nervous, possibly even ill. Now, he just asked, “What is that?”

 _“R’lyeh,”_  the thing rumbled at him, before launching into a lengthy discourse. Words hit James like bullets —  _nagl_  and  _ftagn_  and  _lw’nafh_  and  _ya_  — surfacing from the hypnotic drone and sinking back into the noise.

Afterwards, James thought the thing had said, “R’llyeh, where I was having a blloody good drream, untill ssomething woke me.”

“Oh.” James had a moment’s distant worry that him crashing the plane had been involved in that waking, but no, the plane was two days’ walk off in... some direction. He hadn’t seen a lake at all in the flyover. “Sorry.”

The thing nodded, lifting its hand to bring the cigarette up to its tentacles. They parted enough for the cigarette to briefly disappear. Then the thing exhaled smoke and gurgled at him again, words James understood to mean, “Not your fault. Had to happen sooner or later. The ocean’s draining.”

“There hasn’t been an ocean here for” — James tried to remember when the dinosaurs had roamed, but  _Jurassic Park_  had been a long time ago — “sixty-five million years, give or take.”

With another cigarette smoke-flavoured sigh, the thing nodded. “Yess.”

Only then did it occur to James that this probably wasn’t a conversation he should be having. He was supposed to fill out a Hostile Contact Report for every conversation he had with an enemy of the Commonwealth, and he suspected that there weren’t enough checkboxes on the form to cover this circumstance.

Remembering that he was a spy, his primary job intelligence gathering, he regained some of his old smooth manners. “I should have introduced myself. Bond. James Bond. And you are...?”

_“Cthulhu.”_

James nodded. There  _definitely_  weren’t enough checkboxes on the HCR for this.

“You don’t happen to know where the nearest city is, do you? Village? Farmer’s hut?”

The thing — Cthulhu — used its other hand to point one claw at the horizon, off to its left. “Aiueb Gnsshall hass a temple therre, wherre the warrllorrdss of old gave him trribute for his favour. Arrogant sshit.”

“I probably can’t get a taxi there,” James pointed out.

Cthulhu pointed towards the right, this time. “Nyctelioss sslleepss in Atherron beneath the ssea, imprrissoned, overr therre.”

“I’ve visited my fair share of prisons,” James admitted. “I’d rather not visit another.”

Cthulhu’s laugh caused the surface of the lake to fracture as if it were iced over. James stared at it, watching as the shattered water bubbled and rippled before settling back to mirror-smoothness once more. “Ssame.”

“So, about that taxi?” James hinted.

“Thiss iss the Drreamlandss.” A handful of eyes swirled and spun to watch James. “Thiss is the edge of the centrre of alll. Taxi sserrvicess arre unrreliablle.”

James chuckled and took a drag. “You’ve never taken a taxi in Bangkok.”

“Trrue.”

“Any suggestion on which way to go, then?”

More eyes gravitated over to the side of its head closest to James. “To go wherre?”

“London, eventually.”

Cthulhu burbled, but it sounded more like a thoughtful hum than words. Well, no. It sounded like an entire herd of cattle being dropped into a woodchipper — a grotesque image that James never needed.

“Wesst,” Cthulhu finally said, gesturing off to its left. “Folllow the cliffss of Leng, to the ten thoussand sstairrss. You can buy passsage at Dylath-Leen, for a prrice.”

“I suspect not one I can afford.”

Another thoughtful burble made James shiver. “Orr you can usse yourr key.” It lifted the cigarette to its tentacles, took one last drag, and then flicked the butt off towards the lake. The surface briefly erupted in blue-green flames before the butt sank.

Prudently, James ground his out under his heel. “What key?”

The clawed hand lifted, pointing at James’ chest. “The ssilverr key. It bindss you therre, on the otherr sside of the gate of drreamss.”

James looked down at himself. Once-nice shawl-collar dinner jacket, in midnight blue; bloodstained white shirt with mother-of-pearl studs; loose black satin bow tie.

Then, curious, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out the cigarette case, with the bullet. “This?”

He took Cthluhu’s hiss to mean yes.

James took out his pocket knife and began to pry at the bullet. He wanted to ask if this was in any way  _real_ , but that seemed inexcusably rude. Besides, as soon as he allowed himself to think of reality, he’d realise that he’d probably gone mad. And that would get him no closer to rescue.

Instead, he pried the bullet out of the case. “Is this what...” He trailed off, looking at the empty rock where Cthluhu had been sitting.

There was no  _possible_  way something that big and, well,  _squishy_  could have vanished without him noticing. The bullet fell as he put a hand on his holstered Walther, prepared to draw. The surface of the lake was a clear, brilliant turquoise, undisturbed, without a hint of some ancient buried temple or green light or flames dancing on the fractured surface.

He blinked.

Ancient buried temple?

Christ, he needed a bloody vacation.

Rubbing at his eyes, he went to the water’s edge and knelt down. Just as he leaned forward to take a drink, he heard a beep.

“Buggering fucking hell, you couldn’t have done this two bloody days ago?” he muttered as he stood back up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the radio that he’d thought was dead. Sure enough, when he extended the tiny antenna, a little red light at the top blinked.

There was no sense wandering the damned wilderness. Rescue could come to him. He walked to the nearby rock and climbed up; conveniently, the forward edge was fractured into weather-worn steps, and the top surface was smoothed into a gentle dip, like a chair, though for someone impossibly large.

James had time to smoke two more of his cigarettes (and why was he one short?) before he finally heard the sound of a helicopter.

“About bloody time,” he muttered, standing on the rock to scan the horizon. “Thanks a lot.”

Then he heard a sound, perhaps the  _whump-whump_  of the rotors being distorted by the rocky terrain around the lake bed. It was a low, thick gurgling sound that James could swear sounded like words.

_“You’rrre wellcome, Jamess.”_


End file.
